This application relates generally to anonymization of data. More specifically, the disclosure provided herein relates to anonymization of data over multiple temporal releases of the data.
Anonymization of data has become important for protecting the privacy of individuals, accounts, and/or other private information associated with data that is shared for analysis, data mining, and/or other purposes. For example, entities sharing data that includes sensitive information may anonymize the data to allow others to study the data without compromising privacy of individuals or entities reflected in the data. Thus, third parties can apply new analysis and data mining techniques to the data without exposing private information of individuals or entities associated with the data.
The recent explosion of social networking services has been followed by efforts to study and understand behavior of social networking users and networks by network researches, sociologists, application developers, and other parties. Such studies require analysis of social networking data. Social networking data typically includes sensitive information relating to social networking service users. Additionally, social networks typically evolve over time, which may make study of multiple temporal releases of the social networking data interesting from an analysis standpoint.